WINSTON CHURCHILL GOT A GREAT MANY THINGS RIGHT, BUT ONE THAT HE GOT BADLY WRONGwas the 1943 Powell and Pressburger film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Before even having seen it, the then Prime Minister decided that it was pro-German (it isn’t), hostile to the war and/or to the British Army (it is neither), a satire on himself (also untrue) and, above all, unpatriotic. The last accusation is especially unjust: Blimp has a serious claim not only to be the best English film ever made but the best film about England.
There is a story that Churchill barged into the West End theatre dressing room of Anton Walbrook, who plays the anti-Nazi refugee Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff in , and demanded to know what the film was supposed to mean. “I suppose you regard it as good propaganda for Britain,” the PM reportedly expostulated. Walbrook, whose real name was Adolf Wohlbrück — and who, as a gay, half-Jewish Austrian émigré, was essentially playing himself — must have felt quite threatened. After all, it was Churchill who notoriously had ordered the rounding up and internment of “enemy aliens” after Dunkirk with the words: “Collar the lot!” But Walbrook had the presence of mind to reply coolly:
